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Monthly Archives: February 2009

Almost 2 years ago, 729 of you generously took time to fill out a survey about OPACs (archived here). You can find a selection of blog posts about the results here.

I’m pleased to say that a follow-up survey is now being conducted by Bowker and I’d encourage as many of you as possible to fill it in. For every 100 responses, Bowker will donate a gift of schoolbooks to deprived children via the Oxfam Unwrapped scheme 🙂

I think in 2007 we managed to gather enough statistical evidence to say “OPACs suck” and it’ll be interesting to see how much has changed in the last couple of years! Quite a few of you were hoping to implement new features in your OPACs …did it happen? …did those features meet your expectations?

So, would anyone be interested in attending an event hosted in Huddersfield (or perhaps somewhere else in Yorkshire)? I’ve posted a comment on the Mashed Libraries forum with more details about travel links to Huddersfield. Please post a comment here or on the forum to say “yay” or “nay”!

[1] “oop north” is fairly common slang for “up north” (i.e. the North of England), as in “it’s grim oop north“

Although we’ve got “OPAC” in the name, I think the session should include anything to do with library catalogues, library usage data, MARC records, federated search engines, revelancy ranking, facets, etc

We’d like to kick the session of with several “Minute Madness” talks. If you’re considering coming along to the session, and you meet any of the following criteria, please add your name to wiki!

you’ve done something cool with your OPAC

you’d like to do something cool with your OPAC

you’d like a soapbox to rant about how much your OPAC sucks

you’d just like an opportunity to rant about something

you’re in need of a new soapbox

you’ve got a box of soap

you’re in need of a box of soap

you’re intending to steal all of the soap from your hotel room

you’d like to steal all of the soap from your hotel room, but you need to a box to put it all in

Remember — if you don’t volunteer, then we’ll need to unleash the JISC Press Gang 😉

Hopefully we’ll then be able to use the topics raised by the lightning talks to help shape the rest of the session.

Squirrels falling out of the sky isn’t something that’s unheard of in Huddersfield — see this BBC News story about an inventor who suffered whiplash from a falling squirrel — but I’d not seen it happen until yesterday.

Late yesterday afternoon, we ventured out into the snow and had a little wander through the local woods. I’d taken my camera with me and, not too far into the woods, I took this photo of the path…

My camera’s set up to do a “burst” of shots, so it automatically took another 3 photos in quick succession. Just as I was taking the first photo, I was aware of a noise in the tree tops — what I didn’t realise was it was the sound of a squirrel falling 😀

The next shot caught the squirrel in mid-fall, although it’s just a blur in the middle of the frame…

…it had a soft landing in about 9 inches of snow…

…and then headed straight back up the nearest tree…

…within seconds it was leaping around the tree tops like nothing had happened…